


Much Sooner Forgotten

by sinuous_curve



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Exposure, Minor Violence, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Neither of them react when Loki emerges from the mirror. They have both seen his most treasured trick a hundred thousand times. Fandral, sitting on the bottom of Sif's bed, lifts his head with tired eyes and manages a small, conciliatory smile. "It's not as bad as it looks," he says.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Much Sooner Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the lovely sabrina_il. My thanks to lyo for audiencing and for the prompt.

Usually, at battle's end, it is a time for celebration. Mead and meat on the table and a feast that lasts the night and into the next day. It is a time for satiation and revelry in survival and it is almost unnatural to hear silence echoing in Asgard's halls. Not all battles come with glory and sometimes triumph is clawed from the hands of despair with blood and hurt. Hogun is in magic sleep as his body knits itself into one piece; Thor and Volstagg stitched back together and sent to their beds.

Loki walks through the halls with his heart pounding against his ribs, seeking Sif and Fandral.

A better brother would go to Thor, but Thor is never the most pleasant of patients and he will only be less agreeable for the guilt that comes from his friends being hurt as well. Loki has no talent for comfort. His care for Thor is genuine, of course, but there is no frantic sense of panic for him that there is for Loki's warriors. His Sif and Fandral. He slips through the hallways with his footsteps the only sound until he finds a large enough mirror and casts himself inside. It is easier to travel unseen.

He finds them still dressed in Sif's quarters, skin smudged with grime and sweat and blood. There is a small cut on Fandral's cheek, no more than the kiss of a sword against his skin and still Sif touches piece of cloth to the clotted wound. Her dark hair falls around her face in unkempt locks. They both look hollow-eyed, like children recently woken from a nightmare.

Neither of them react when Loki emerges from the mirror. They have both seen his most treasured trick a hundred thousand times. Fandral, sitting on the bottom of Sif's bed, lifts his head with tired eyes and manages a small, conciliatory smile. "It's not as bad as it looks," he says.

Loki crosses the room in swift, wordless steps and has his hands on them both before either can offer up another platitude. He slides his arm around Sif's waist and pulls her close; her head drops to his shoulder with a long exhalation of breath as if her entire body is sagging beneath the weight of the miserable day. His fingers push through the sweat- tangled mess of Fandral's hair and pull his forehead to press against Loki's chest. Fandral brings up a hand to lie atop Loki's and closes his eyes.

Loki feels them both breathe beneath his hands and loves them with a fierceness that is like a wolf growling in the center of his chest. He can smell the old sourness of fear clinging to their skin and, for a moment, hates that they are as much warriors as they are alive and that he could not ask them ever to take another path. "You both need rest," he says quietly, but with firm conviction.

"I'm fine," Sif protests, though Loki notes she does not pull away. Her voice is muffled against his shoulder. "I should see to Hogun before--"

"Hogun," Loki interrupts. "Is in the finest healing hands of Asgard. And it would not do to send the Goddess of War into their hands through her own stubbornness because she refuses to take rest when she ought."

Sif sighs and nods and lifts her head reluctantly. Loki slips his hand from her waist and brushes a loose strand of hair away from her face. "Hold out your arms," he says. It's not a question nor a demand, and still he expects obedience.

Sif takes an uncertain half step back and extends her arms, palms raised. Loki bends and presses a kiss to the crown of Fandral's head and then releases him. With a steadiness he is surprised he possesses, Loki slips his hands beneath Sif's and kisses the center of each palm. He can taste ash and blood infused to the grooves of her skin. When he raises his head, Sif's eyes are darker and her fingers curl inward. Loki meets her gaze and an understanding passes between them.

It is, sometimes, difficult to find the balancing point between War and Mischief. But they manage. Loki carefully unlaces her vambraces and passes them to Fandral, who knows better than he how Sif cares for her armor. Loki bends again and kisses the insides of her wrists, at the sharp delineation between clean skin and dirty.

Sif sighs and bows her head so her hair spills dark across her face. Loki finds the clasps of her cape and undoes them, then pushes it off her shoulders so the stained fabric falls like a puddle to her feet.. She is so much smaller without the dramatic cut of cloth augmenting her silhouette. "Raise your arms," Loki says and she does. He makes quick work of the straps of the pauldrons the cover her shoulders. Fandral takes them from Loki's hand without being asked.

Loki lowers Sif's arms and kisses the bend of her elbows, then her shoulders.

The fastenings of her breastplate are less easily disarmed, but Loki is not a stranger to stripping his lady warrior. She exhales again when Loki eases it away as her chest is released from tight confines. Her breasts, fuller than the armor would lead one to believe, come to rest on her chest. The line of her side finds a gentler curve. The tunic beneath is sweat-stained and creased, speckled with filth and refuse; still, Loki pulls at the slit that bisects down from her neck and kisses the small of her throat, then her collarbone.

Loki kneels, which he has never done before and he would not do if any single circumstance were different. Sif and Fandral both, in almost charming tandem, make soft sounds of surprise and distress.

Loki ignores it, quickly loosing the straps of Sif's greaves and laying them in Fandral's hands. He stands facing Sif stripped of her armor, wearing only her tunic and leggings and boots. Loki opens his arms and she comes so easily, pressing her palms to Loki's chest and her face to the curve of his neck. Loki encircles her, murmuring soothing nonsense in a low tone. He strokes her hair; it is lush and soft beneath his palm. Secretly, he will never regret his trickery that turned her into another blackbird like himself.

"Help me with him?" Loki whispers in her ear and he feels rather than hears Sif's small, low laugh. She raises her head and nods, mouth turned ever so slightly at the corners into a smile. In so many ways she is the lynchpin for them all, the balancing point between Loki and Fandral. She has the ability to whatever is needed and revels in the fluidity.

Loki turns to look at Fandral, still on the edge of the bed like a tableau of a perfect Asgardian warrior brought low in battle. "Smile for me," Loki says. "Don't think I've forgotten you."

"Your hands," Loki says, releasing Sif and turning to Fandral. She steps to his side and they each accept one of Fandral's gloved hands. Loki eases the glove from his fingers and tosses it aside, because Fandral is easier than Sif with the trivialities. Loki touches his nose to the center of Fandral's palm and inhales the scent of leather soaked into skin, then kisses it. He can feel the calluses writ in years of handling weapons day in and day out. They are practical hands, and strong, and Loki loves them.

Then his vambraces, which they both let tumble carelessly to the floor. Loki brushes his thumb over the tangle of bone and tendon at Fandral's wrist. Before he kisses the thin skin, he scrapes his teeth over it and earns a soft little noise from Fandral and a pleased hum from Sif.

Then his cape, of course, or rather his capes. "So impractical," Loki says, searching his fingers through the fabric from the impossibly tiny clasps that keep the panel in place. "It's never simple with your clothes."

Fandral ducks his head, but he's smiling. Sif manages to loosen her panel first and with some display of strength, throws it across the room against the wall. Loki chuckles and repeats the action when he frees his, and together their mouths seek Fandral's neck and suck until there are bright red marks blooming indolently.

"Arms," Loki orders when he pulls his mouth away and Fandral's obedience is less submission than eagerness. He raises his arms and tips back his head.

No one other than Fandral himself has fingers clever enough to don and remove his breastplate on their own, and so it is necessity that Sif and Loki's hands work in tandem. There is s savor to their victorious success that does something small to assuage the heaviness of the day. Armor is simple and it is satisfying to let Fandral's breastplate fall from their hands to the floor.

Fandral wears no greaves and still Loki lowers himself to his knees so he might undo the ties of Fandral's tunic and bare his chest. Fandral sighs at the hush of fabric against his skin, a noise caught somewhere between pleasure and relief. There are, predictably, bruises beginning to shadow blue across his ribs. Loki expected no less and he kisses the wounds with force enough to draw a sharp intake of breath from Fandral. A minor punishment for being foolish enough to place himself in harm's way, when he knows Loki and Sif cannot survive without him.

"Loki," Fandral murmurs and before he can say anything, Loki rises to his feet and looks down at Fandral, swallowing hard. Sif eases onto the bed and slides his arm around Fandral's waist; his head falls easily to her shoulder and she smiles, affectionately kissing his forehead. They are beautiful and they are Loki's and that, as much as their survival and their wholeness, is the miracle.

"Come to my rooms," Loki says. "You both need--" _Me_ , he thinks. "You both need to wash and rest."

There is no privacy in the warrior's quarters, unlike Loki's rooms that are guarded constantly against any unwelcome intrusion. There can be no undo touches while they might be seen and Loki's palms itch to sketch Sif and Fandral's skin and lay claim to the hurts.

"We might be seen," Sif says, but he words lack any genuine warning.

"Then let us be seen," Loki says. It is bravado, yes, but more than that. He is the God Mischief and that is aways taken to mean tricks and lightness, but no. There is more to him than that. "Will you come?"

Sif nods and Fandral says, "Yes." And to that, Loki turns and steps back into the mirror. He desires them and they deserve their comfort, consequences be damned.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Much Sooner Forgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/550504) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)




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